She had reminded him of his mother.
Mae Capone’s Irish good looks and her cheery manner and her maternal fuss had, inevitably, reminded him of his mama, and there wasn’t a damned thing to be done about it. Much as he tried to banish the thought, it kept floating back. The image of a smile that was at once Mae’s and his mother’s lingered, goddamnit.
So what if she was a nice woman? And had a nice son who was doing his bit for the war effort? Who cared that Mimi Capone was a decent, harmless guy, and that their life down here was a placid routine of isolated luxury? Capone remained Capone—the man who had betrayed Michael O’Sullivan, Sr., and dispatched a contract killer to cut him down. The same Capone who had aligned himself with the Looneys after the murders of Michael’s mother and brother, and who, to this day, conspired with Frank Nitti to rule the kingdom of Chicago crime…
Mae Capone and her son Sonny and their loving husband/father, despite all Al Capone’s sins, had enjoyed years together, as a family. They had had birthdays and Easters and Thanksgivings and Christmases…Even with Capone in prison for a time, they’d been alive and had each other.
His hands tensed into fists; untensed. Tensed again.
He stared at the ceiling, not wanting to hurt Mae Capone, but knowing that a few kind words and a plate of corned beef and cabbage were not enough to dissuade Michael O’Sullivan, Jr., from doing what he had come here to do…
A little after two a.m., just below the Capone suite, a guard in a yellow sport shirt banded by a brown shoulder holster bent to light up a cigarette with a Zippo lighter. It didn’t spark to flame on the first try and his thumb was poised for a second, when the barrel of a .45 slammed across the back of his skull and dropped him to the grass.
Using black electrical tape, Michael bound the guard’s wrists behind him and the man’s ankles, too, and dragged the unconscious figure over to nearby bushes, tucking him out of sight before another guard could wander by to notice. Michael confiscated the man’s .38 Police Special and stuck it in his waistband, next to the spare pawn-shop .45.
Michael slipped his father’s .45 back into its shoulder holster worn over the green T-shirt; then—using the technique he’d partly demonstrated to Mimi, earlier—climbed from window sill to awning frame and hoisted himself up and over the balcony rail.
The sky was clear and starry with a full moon; ivory washed Michael and everything else on the balcony, which was not much: a comfortable-looking deck chair and a little table. The view here was onto the spacious backyard dotted with palms and other foliage, and the substantial swimming pool, the dock beyond; moonlight dappled off shimmering water, both the pool and the bay. No guards in sight.
Curtained French doors led from balcony to bedroom. Automatic in his right hand, Michael tried the handle with his left, gently…
Unlocked.
He pushed the door open and entered the dark room, leaving the door ajar, letting moonlight in. The room was as spare as an Alcatraz cell: two twin beds, one at left, the other right; nothing on the walls, not even a Maxfield Parrish; no nightstands; a chest of drawers; a lounge chair facing the balcony, with a small table next to it.
No radio. No books, or magazines, or newspapers.
Also, no Capone.
One bed, covers rumpled, did indicate a recent slumberer. At his left, Michael saw a closed door with an edge of light at the bottom. Gun in hand, he crossed to that door, tried the knob, went in fast.
Nothing.
Bathroom—shower stall with door closed; oversize toilet; double sink. Many, many pill bottles. Electric razor. Towels on racks and more stacked on a clothes hamper.
Michael opened the shower door and aimed his .45 in at an empty, oversize stall. When he shut it again, ever so gently, metal nonetheless nudged metal and made a sound, and when he moved back into the dark bedroom, a guard in the usual sport-shirt and shoulder holster burst in, a small dark frowning figure, throwing a wedge of light into the bedroom, and pointing a .38 at the intruder.
Michael shot the guard, in the head, and red splashed the door and smeared into modern art as the man slid down, the guard’s gunshot hitting a stucco wall, making a terrible metallic reverberation; and then another guard was in the doorway and he was firing at Michael, who hit the deck and fired up at the shooter, catching him in the head as well, though the angle sent the spatter up even as the man dropped down, piling on top of his crony, doggy-style.
From the open doors onto the balcony, yelling from below—none of it discernible as words, but the gist easily understood—discouraged Michael from exiting the way he’d come, and he figured his best bet was the rental car out front, so he jumped over the two bodies stacked in the doorway, and as he did, caught dripping blood from the ceiling onto the side of his face. He didn’t bother wiping it off because it would only make his hands sticky.
He was heading briskly down the stairway when the front door opened and three more of them rushed in, eyes wild, guns in hand, and this time the words were easy to make out: “There’s the bastard! Get him!” “Shoot that fucker!”
In a flash he realized a tactical error: if he’d made his move before shift change, these men would recognize him and he might have talked his way out; but for now he was just a guy in a green T-shirt on the stairs with a pistol in his hand. And blood on his face…
He withdrew the other .45 and hopped onto the banister and went straddle-sliding down, shooting all the way, a regular two-gun kid, and the men streaming through the doorway fired up at him, but he was a moving target and they were slowed down by his gunfire, which was turning them from men into bodies, tripping over each other as they died.
When Michael got to the bottom of the stairs, four dead men were sprawled there, one or two of them propping the door open, and he could see the Packard out there, just waiting…
…but he could also see three more guards in their sport shirts and shoulder holsters running toward him with teeth bared and eyes wide.
He threw a few shots their way, catching one, and headed into and through the kitchen, corned beef and cabbage taunting him, and hurtled across the backyard, tossing away the spare .45, which was empty, and replacing it with the commandeered .38, from that first guard.
Up ahead was the swimming pool, but beyond that the dock, and a speedboat; that seemed his best, perhaps his only bet…
But as he approached the pool, men came streaming down the stairs of the cabana—four men, two of whom were the round-and square-faced cardplaying guards from Capone’s anteroom. They were in their underwear—these were some of the live-in guards—wearing T-shirts and boxer shorts…and handguns.
The cardplayer who hadn’t spoken this afternoon paused halfway down the steps. “There! Get him!”
Michael took the offensive, running right at them, along the edge of the pool, firing up at them with a gun in either hand, and the round-faced guy, who’d been in the lead, caught a couple slugs in his head, which more or less exploded in a bone-and-blood red-and-white shower, and then tumbled down, flung onto the steps, and the other three stumbled over him, trying to shoot at Michael, who was doing a better job shooting at them.
Soon they were in an awkward pile of death at the bottom of the steps, as if they’d all gone after a fumbled football, the hard way.
Michael wheeled, looking to see if any more of them were coming up behind him, from the house.
Nobody. Not right now, anyway.
And he wheeled back to the pile of guards in their bloody underwear and went over and kicked at them, making sure they were dead; not so long ago, he’d checked the Japs in that clearing much the same way.
Behind him a voice said: “Nail the fucker!”
Two guys were running at him, across the backyard, firing wildly, barely more than shapes in the moonlight. The .38 was empty—he flung it to one side—and flopped onto the grass, withdrawing a spare magazine from his pocket and slamming it into the automatic.
Now they were close enough, and he took them dow
n with head shots; one flopped face-forward onto the grass, dead too quick to be surprised, and the other caught one in the neck and his hands went to his throat and blood squirted through his fingers as he did a sad, short crazy dance before tumbling into the pool sideways, not making much of a splash, then floating there, blood streaming out, diluting itself in the pool water, the red looking black in the moonlight.
Michael got to his feet.
He listened carefully. He could not hear anything but the lapping of the water behind him, the bay beckoning; only now he could afford to head back to the house and use the rental car. Or would others be waiting…?
He was weighing that when another sound drifted across the eerie solitude of the night.
A whimpering.
At first he thought he’d wounded one of them, but the sniveling sound just wasn’t right. It was coming from near the swimming pool. Carefully, he stalked over there, .45 ready; and then he saw the figure, down on the cement beside a deck chair.
A big, fat figure, with curly gray thinning hair, rolled up like the world’s largest fetus. Wearing a purple bathrobe over cream-colored pajamas; with purple slippers.
Michael almost laughed.
In all the excitement, distracted as he was by killing a dozen or so men, Michael had forgotten what this was about.
Capone.
Al Capone, who right now was a whimpering terrified blob on the pool’s cement skirt, and Michael—his mind’s eye filled with the image of his father, dead on the kitchen floor in that farmhouse—grabbed the figure by the arm and flung him onto his back, though the man’s knees pulled up, his eyes wide and confused.
The famous face had a formlessness about it, but this was King Capone, all right—even if those chipmunk cheeks, scars and all, happened to be smeared with tears and snot.
Michael knelt and put the gun in Capone’s pudgy neck, dimpling the flesh, and hovered over him, the ganglord on his back, his about-to-be killer on his knees, as if in prayer.
“Look at me, Snorky! Look at me.”
Capone looked at Michael.
“Do you know who I am?”
Capone’s big eyes registered nothing.
And just as Michael was about to tell the king of crime exactly who he was, Capone asked, in a very small voice, “Where is it?”
Through his teeth, Michael spat: “Where is what?”
“My…my fishing rod?”
Michael winced, trying to make sense of this. He got on his feet, looking down at the fat child-like figure. In the moonlight, around them, lay dead bodies—Michael’s grim handiwork, all to bring him to this moment.
But Al Capone was rummaging around on the cement like a baby seeking its rattle.
“Here it is!”
With great effort, Capone lifted the fishing rod, which had been on the other side of the deck chair, where he managed to awkwardly seat himself; then he cast the line limply into the water.
It was as if Michael weren’t there at all.
The greatest of all gangsters sat fishing in his swimming pool, smiling the smile of a very young and not at all bright child, drool dribbling from plump purple lips as he hummed a tuneless song, oblivious to the carnage around them.
And Michael knew.
He understood. Understood it all: the syphilis had reduced Capone to a near vegetable, and Nitti had hidden that from all but a small select circle, to maintain his own power and the illusion of Capone’s.
There would be no revenge upon Big Al, on this or any night; the syphilis had beaten Michael to it, leaving a brain-damaged, befogged husk where Alphonse Capone had once been. Barely forty, this ancient mariner sat fishing in his pool, waiting for a bite he’d never get.
As he processed this shocking news, Michael did not notice the men slowly approaching—three more guards with guns drawn, and behind them Mimi Capone.
Who said, “Put the gun down, Michael.”
And Michael tossed the gun on the grass, turning his back on what remained of Al Capone. He fell to his knees and began to weep as the men closed in.
BOOK
TWO
LOONEY DAYS
The Tri-Cities
March 1922
ONE
Annie O’Sullivan had a storybook life, and she knew it.
She was twenty-six years old with a heart-shaped face, reddish blonde hair bobbed Irene Castle–style, with china-blue eyes, doll-like features and the fair, faintly freckled complexion of the Red Irish. Normally petite, at the moment she was a monster—nine months pregnant in a dark blue maternity dress whose feminine white collar made the garment no less tent-like.
The morning had been notably uncomfortable, making her wonder if today would be the day. But by the afternoon, the stirrings had settled down, not even a kick from the anxious resident within her.
She sat reading The Ladies’ Home Journal in the living room of the two-story house on Twenty-second Street in Highland Park, up the hill in Rock Island. Being “up the hill” meant a lot: she and her husband, Mike, had spent almost three years in a shanty in the Greenbush neighborhood below. Now they had one of the nicest homes in town, a two-story white stucco well back from the street on a generous lawn with a detached garage.
Not that the house was ostentatious; there was nothing showy about the O’Sullivans or their home, with its nearly austere interior of pale plaster walls of green and yellow against dark woodwork, softened by curtains of lace.
How exciting it had been to buy all the furniture new (nothing much from where they’d lived before had been worth hanging on to); solid mission oak with straight, unadorned lines—Mike did not care for the fancy new veneers—and her all-white sanitary kitchen, with wood-burning stove, was efficient and modern, a homemaker’s dream.
The house and their simple yet not inexpensive furnishings reflected those within. Her handsome dark-haired husband (Black Irish, he was) was, for the most part, a serious, dignified man, whose finer qualities emerged in the bedroom, by way of his tenderness, and here in the living room, by way of his love for their son.
Their living room—where she sat in a comfortable, commodious mohair upholstered armchair, suitable to her current size, swollen feet propped up on an ottoman—was as good an indication as any of the devotion Michael O’Sullivan, Sr., felt for Michael O’Sullivan, Jr. The braided carpet on their parquet floor harbored an elaborate electric train layout, the finest Lionel had to offer, from trains and track to signal towers, tunnels, depots, and ticket offices.
With his hat literally in his hand, her husband had begged his wife’s permission to turn their formal living room into a train yard, “for just a little while.” Young Michael was a precocious three, and though she suspected “a little while” might well prove to be months or even years, Annie had no objections to an activity that would keep their little man’s energetic hands, feet, and mind happily occupied.
Not that her son had ever been a problem. Michael, Jr., had an active mind, and loved to play outside with neighborhood boys and girls; he was in general obedient to both his parents—it was as if he’d been born respectful, or perhaps the example of his stoic but not unkind father had sunk in, early on.
About the only battles that ever occurred were at the kitchen table—her boy was a fussy eater. On the other hand, when meals were served in the dining room, the formality of the surroundings encouraged angelic behavior, even in the presence of brussel sprouts.
Right now Michael was having his afternoon nap. He didn’t fuss about it—though the boy did not yet read, he loved books, and would page through picture books (Peter Rabbit a particular favorite, and L. Frank Baum’s Mother Goose) until he fell asleep, whether for his nap or at night.
As for the trains, she took no greater pleasure than to sit nearby with a book or a magazine (neither crochet nor needle work interested her), classical music playing on their new console radio, while father and son crouched and scurried and tended around the edges of their railroad yard. The eyes of both her
“boys” flashed with a childish glee that she saw often in her son but rarely in her husband.
She knew her husband, Mike, adored her; he placed her on a pedestal, though he was not shy about removing her from that perch, behind closed doors. A deep passion ran beneath the surface of this stoic man.
The former Annie O’Hanlon had known her husband for several years before they married. He had come to the Tri-Cities from New York, where his late father had been a railroad man; he’d heard that John Deere was hiring, and he landed a job as a shop sweeper. She’d met him through church activities at Sacred Heart, and for a time Mike had courted her best friend, Katie O’Meara.
Before long Annie and Mike had become a couple—Katie understood, she’d sensed the attraction between them—and they were talking of marriage when he got swept away into the war by the wave of patriotism encompassing the country. In fact, they’d been together, on the porch of her parents’ shanty, when the band had come marching by.
Literally.
The band was made up of college boys—twenty-one members of the Augustana marching band, and they’d enlisted as a unit in the 6th Illinois Regiment. They played a final concert, then paraded through town performing martial marches, from Rock Island to the train station, high-stepping right through Greenbush.
Mike enlisted the next day.
He had returned a hero with a glittering array of medals and a somber, more adult presence that both thrilled and intimidated Annie; he’d been a boy when he left, but things overseas had turned him into a man—things he made clear he would never discuss with her…
Shortly after Mike’s return, Mr. Looney had invited him up to his house on the hill, in the Longview Loop area—Rock Island’s Knob Hill, rife with doctors, lawyers, and old money. Mr. Looney lived on Twentieth Street in a brooding stone mansion in Highland Park, a far cry from Greenbush.
Road to Purgatory Page 13
